


a wholesome girl

by villanelle



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 17:51:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4489041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villanelle/pseuds/villanelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re not in the business of taking it easy on the new girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a wholesome girl

**Author's Note:**

> Started watching the movie, felt nostalgic for season 1, and self-diagnosed that writing down shipping feels is cheaper than therapy.

  
  
  
  
“I’ve glimpsed into a world that a wholesome girl like you can’t even imagine."

“You sure about that?” she says cheekily in reply. “You might be underestimating my imagination.”  
    
It’s not the first time someone has used that word to describe Akane, and it probably would not be the last, but Kagari’s flippant remark irks her in a lingering way throughout the night, and by the time she’s finished off the bottle passed between them, she can’t help but ask,

“Ok, so I’ve checked alcohol off my vices list. And you mentioned love, or well, sex earlier.” Kagari’s eyebrows shoot way up at that. “What else though? What else lies in this debauched world you’re referring to?”

“Lying to your boss that you’re sick while actually playing video games for two days straight,” Kagari groans, trying to sit up on the couch cushions and somehow achieving the opposite result of nestling deeper instead.

Akane laughs. “Not an answer I was expecting.”

“It ranked as a cardinal sin in Gino’s eyes.”

“Hmm, I’m surprised Ginoza-san didn’t use the Dominator on you for that. Ok, what else?”

Kagari stops playing along, and his face, albeit still rosy in the cheeks, turns quite grave. She tends to think of him as the pup compared to the more weathered visage of Masaoka and the raptorial side Kougami has revealed in midst of pursuits, but Kagari’s voice acquires the timbre of a chiding elder as he warns, “You don’t need me to tell you, Akane-chan. If you hang around with us, in our world long enough, you just might find out for yourself firsthand.”

 

* * *

 

She relished the balcony at headquarters for its height, for the haven it offered when the office air became too stifled with words spoken and unspoken, but she had to admit that it was incomparable to the cantilevered terraces of Professor Saiga’s home.

“Enjoying the view?” Kougami’s voice comes from behind her, audible but slightly dampened by the surrounding sounds of water and birdsong. 

Running her hand along the smooth stone of the ledge, Akane answers with unsuppressed giddiness, “Savoring it. I saw this house, the original construction, in one of my grandmother’s books. A history of twentieth century architecture, I believe. I wanted to know so badly if an interior holo could replicate it so that we could live above a waterfall too.”

Akane thinks of her own apartment, of all the wonders of architecture that were accessible at her fingertips with just a simple order to Candy. There were so many packages for purchase these days. For the traditionalists, a wooden floor base could be carpeted with woven tatami instead, the walls and doors transformed into matrices of rice paper shoji panels. For the minimalists, a palette of only white and black could wash over a room in seconds.

But a house like this had to be experienced. At least, Akane had never come across a holo program that could duplicate the immersive feeling of standing on a terrace that thrusted out above a frothy plunge which breathed the sounds of water into the house.

“So you really are a grandma’s girl.”

Thinking morosely of their most recent case, Akane replies, “She's been a constant source of good influence, in ways I’m still realizing now. When I was ten, my parents considered sending me to Ousou Academy. I remember them showing me the website, and it had some awfully trite slogans along the lines of, ‘We cultivate our girls to bloom into womanhood.’”

She understands why the idea of it appealed to her parents, the implication that Ousou students were not roadside flowers, subsisting on only what nature gave, but rarer breeds, to be kept in a greenhouse with an exact, measured temperature and environment to achieve an ideal of beauty.

“My grandmother objected though,” Akane continues. “Her reasoning was that it does one no good to be isolated from the world.”

_“Isolation,” her grandmother murmured, grey head shaking at the morning news. “Does no favors for country or individual. Hasn’t Japan learned its lesson in this already?”_

_“Mother, please!” They were finishing up breakfast in a busy restaurant, and her father’s shushing was followed by nervous darting looks around the room._

_Aoi shrugged and simply whispered to her favorite grandchild. “The thing is, Akane, many things never really change. They just perpetuate in new disguises.”_

“I should thank her for that,” Akane muses. “Otherwise, I could’ve ended up the victim in this case rather than the investigator.”

“I don’t think you would’ve found yourself in Rikako’s web.”

“Who knows,” she says, thinking of the students they had questioned, of that one in particular who had burrowed her tears in Yayoi’s blouse to avert her eyes from the ambulance carting away her friend’s dismembered body. “I suppose Sibyl can play the matchmaker these days, but still, it hasn’t stopped people from being attracted to those they shouldn’t be.”

Kougami comes to stand next to her, and his voice is oddly resigned. She wonders if it’s because he’s older, and if Kagari has glimpsed into shadowy underbellies, then perhaps Kougami has fully submerged into them. Did his former days as an Inspector include getting too close to the criminals he was tracking, regretful accomplices and dapper-dressed thieves and the tear-lashed widows like in the old black and white movies?

“No,” Kougami agrees. “It hasn’t.”

 

* * *

 

The numbers at the bottom of her screen read five minutes from nine, and her whole body straightens, one foot nudging her chair to angle towards the door.

Nearly two months into her job, Akane discovers that having a crush in the workplace might actually be more aggravating than it is enjoyable. She’d felt the burgeoning awareness but had initially disregarded it as wariness of her least predictable colleague, and besides, Kougami had such a physical presence that it was excusably impossible to not notice him either in the field or in the office. And then, with a sense of impending, increasing distraction, she’d begun picking up that even Kougami’s life exhibited patterns. Most of Division 1 was in the office by 8:10, tapping away at tablets and keyboards while wishing the machine down the hallway dispensed stronger coffee, the real kind derived from fragrant beans rather than hyper-oats.

Except for Kougami, who tended to prowl in through the tinted door around nine, give or take a few minutes, either clutching or chugging a half-emptied water bottle. He tended to stay later into the evening though, and recently, Akane found herself staying just as late, though it wasn’t as if a lack of work led to pretense on her part. Ever since Shion had told her about the Specimen case, Akane had dug up every related case file she could get her hands on. In addition, dozens of tangential topics demanded consideration. Plastination…anatomical preservation…an article on chemical brain preservation, headlined with the news that some bigshot construction CEO would be speaking on a local channel this month.

“Trying to set a record for overtime?” Kougami asks. His gaze is directed towards his screen, but they’re the only ones left amidst all the other dark monitors. He glances at the corner of his. “You should get something to eat. I don’t think you even finished that cup of noodles still sitting there.”

“You're one to talk. I don’t think you ate from anything else but that ashtray by your elbow,” she shoots back with a smile.

A fleeting grin, and he’s not typing anymore. “Does this mean no more wide-eyed rookie? Just sass from here on out?”

“Technically, aren’t you the one talking back to me?” she points out and then wonders if the remark will offend him.

He just shrugs though, flicking his monitor screen off and standing with a roll of his shoulders. “Well, even Inspectors have to eat. You ever ventured to the kitchen?”

“The one connected to the rec room? Yeah, had a whole wining and dining session with Kagari down there.”

“Oh? How did that happen?”

“Hmm, truthfully, I got Kagari drunk and then made him tell me everyone’s secrets. I think we spent an especially long time discussing yours.”

“My secrets, huh?” he repeats with feigned incredulity and then a matching degree of deadpan. “But I’m an open book.”

Akane turns her face away, tucking and hiding her smile. To interact with Kougami, with just him alone, has become both nerve-wracking and quietly thrilling. On one hand, she feels more free to interact as she pleases, without chiding disapproval from Ginoza and knowing smiles from Masaoka. On the other, talking with Kougami makes her feel sometimes like she’s being tested by a favorite but highly challenging professor whom she wants very badly to impress. She supposes he inherited that demeanor from Joji Saiga.

She’s very much a child of her generation in the sense that she’s rarely had to cook a meal by hand, but the kitchen that the Enforcers use is absent of any automated household programs. The last time she was here with Kagari, she’d admitted to relying on Candy for her meals at home, and he’d wrinkled his nose at how unappetizing a machine-produced and calorie-calculated supper sounded. Kagari had shooed her away from the counters after one look at her poor chopping of vegetables, but Kougami and she come to the mutual agreement that she can probably handle whipping together some simple omelettes over rice while he cooks over the stove.

Well, the eggs get splashed a little bit everywhere, and Akane is pretty sure that she squeezed too much ketchup onto the rice, but half an hour later when they sit down, Kougami says ‘not bad’ and the flush in her cheeks isn’t just from the warmth of the accompanying soup anymore.

 

* * *

_  
_

_She dreams of that day she went out, in beige coat and tights too colorful for the office, to meet Kaori and Yuki on the terrace of their favorite cafe. Their drinks have just been delivered to the table but they’re still waiting for the cake._

_“Ladies,” Yuki pronounces, her ash brown ponytail swishing from shoulder to shoulder as she beams at her two friends. With exaggerated ceremonial flair, her fingers dangle her coffee cup as primly as if it were glass stemware. “A toast to our 20s! May we all receive our first paychecks soon and be able to pay our rents.”_

_Grateful for how reassuringly normal this moment feels compared to the tumult of what she does at night now, Akane raises her cup as well and tilts her head back, mouth swallowing more froth than liquid on the initial swallow._

_When she brings the cup back down, the holographically projected dome under which they sit is still sunny-day blue, but Kaori is crying and Yuki is gone._

 

* * *

 

In the infirmary ward, she asks Kougami, “How many people have you shot with a Dominator?”

“Are you asking about lethal or at paralyzer?”

“Well, it’s never failed in either mode, ever, right?”

She doesn’t know why she keeps asking this and seeking confirmation that yes, this is the only anomaly where a criminal stood right in front of an Inspector and got away because Sibyl judged him and saw nothing wrong. Even now, it seems almost forbidden to think it.

“I think I know how you feel now,” she whispers. “That there could be some peace in my mind if I saw Makishima to his —–”

 _Death_ , her mind supplies, more out of automatic instinct than intention, but an even darker justification follows after that.  _Is that not the oldest law? An eye for an eye, a life for a life?_

Every time she has held a Dominator, she has believed herself to be carrying out the law’s judgement.  _Should the one who upholds the law inflict his own law as well?_

“Judgement,” she finishes, and Kougami scoffs.

“The law we live under will not judge him.”

Shuddering, Akane clenches her fists and thinks of her knuckles, squeezing around the trigger uselessly again and again, of the Dominator’s assessment filling her desperate eyes with numbers that crept towards zero in neon blue.

Blue, blue, wretched blue. Ginoza has insisted on daily measurements of her hue since her witnessing of Yuki’s murder, and the results are still pale shades of envy-inducing blue.

_Ah Akane, you’re such a mental beauty._

A wrench of pain wracks through her at the memory, but Akane does not cry as she would have weeks ago. Instead, she blinks her eyes rapidly, twice, clearing away the sheen of moisture as she sets down the basket she brought on the bedside table. As she looks up, she’s met with the glowing ECG monitors of Kougami’s vital signs. The elevation of his body temperature, the rate of his heartbeat, the triple-digit of his crime coefficient hovering above his head for every doctor, nurse, and visitor to see.

“The bureau has a benefits package for a reason, you know,” he says to her, noticing the direction of her gaze. “You should go to at least a few therapy sessions while you’re taking time off.”

“I don’t need it.”

He stares long and hard at her. “Funny, I’m pretty sure I said the same thing once.”

She imagines the Kougami of three years ago, watching his coefficient climb higher and higher, all the while unable to cap that rage from building and letting it out only upon the drones he pummeled.

_What needs to be done is done by those capable of doing it._

“We must use the strengths we are given,” Akane murmurs and faces him with a smile. Her strength is her hue, and she leaves his room with a sense of what she must do now, of how she can put that mental strength to a test.

 

* * *

 

The city at night offers a dazzling array of visual pleasures, and with the prevalence of holograms these days, even simulated fantasies of carnal nature have become available for purchase.

But she’s learned so much about what’s real and what’s not under the surface of their society, and nothing, she thinks with a bitten down whimper, could match the tangible ruin she experiences at her Enforcer’s hands.

Softness to softness. For someone who usually uses his mouth so abrasively to assess and to goad, the way Kougami kisses her is wonderingly soft, coaxing the bud of her mouth and the even redder bud below the cradle of her hips to open slickly for him.

But the way he fucks her is not.

And she’s glad for it. Her team is falling apart, and Makishima has peeled back the civilized veneer of the world outside with his helmet gambit. Everything around her is on shaky, sundered ground, such a brutal reality to the bright future to which she had toasted with her friends.

Slanted above her, Kougami feels like the most solid thing in the world she can cling onto in this moment, the breadth of his shoulders rising and falling with the rhythm of his hips, a shifting horizon line to the sole source of light in the ceiling.

There is a line being crossed here, one Akane is trying to ignore and save for tomorrow’s contemplation. For a moment, she thinks of Kagari teasing her in the kitchen, about all the things a wholesome girl like her wouldn’t know, and then the memory sputters out with a surge of hips pressing her back further into the upholstered foam of the couch. She could hardly care less about being wholesome and pure in that traditionally vaunted sense now. Tomorrow though, she imagines that it might be more difficult to look at him, to work beside him, since no good Inspector should have such intimate knowledge of how her Enforcer felt between her thighs.

Or maybe not. Maybe she will never be able to resist the urge to seek him out, to know just a bit more about Shinya Kougami.

That too is a terrifying thought.

 

* * *

 

Sibyl will not judge Makishima, but its congregation of prophets would like to collect him.

Bile coats and threatens to overwhelm Akane’s throat at the thought of this, at the idea of someone like Makishima enshrined to live on as the law.

And yet, that is already what has happened.

“Tsunemori Akane,” Chief Kasei’s voice fills the room, so repulsively assured in self-righteous authority that Akane wants to smash the butt of the Dominator into the closest component of its glass-encased shrine. “Will you aid us in this endeavor?”

Her hands shaking in a bone-white grip, Akane lowers the useless firearm, her eyes sweeping across the hive of false oracles before her. Two hundred and forty seven specimens deemed beyond the spectrum of conventional morality. She has never so acutely understood that enigmatic phrase in literature of ‘going mad’ until now.

Her memory vaults back to Rikako Oryo, who must’ve been a clever girl, who must have thought of herself as clever. So clever and yet so undiscerning to how entangled she was on puppet strings.

_What kind of girl will I be in contracting with devils like these?_

 

* * *

 

She wakes to a darkened sky and knows instinctively that Kougami has vanished with the last slivers of light. Blanketing her side are stalks of grass, and a medic peers down at her, informing her that they have been sent to retrieve what’s left of Division 1.

The second question she’s asked is whether she would like her hue to be checked.

Closing her eyes, Akane doesn’t bother with a reply.

She doesn’t care much to be judged anyway. 

 

 


End file.
